Ode to a time table.

Our school computer has crashed! And with it the CASS file - i.e. the Continuous Assessment File as required by the Department of Education. I last printed it out in July 2009! My own home computer was stolen in December. It is quite frustrating to have lost so much work. Weekly backups are a must!! Anyway, I just pray the department won't come snooping around. If they do? Well, tough luck. At least there is a thorough descriptive report of her progress Aug - Nov.

Up to now we have always had a sort of a timetable - but we did not really stick to it. Very often followed our noses: did what Tamerin was interested in at that moment. We usually wrote down an "agenda" for the day and ticked off the items we had dealt with - but at the end of the day, there often were several items that we did not get to like practising posture or looking up words in the dictionary.

But now I have made a new weekly timetable!! It took me quite some time to set it up for this year. I thought we would fall behind even on day 1. But we did not! I showed it to Tammy and she seemed happy enough to follow it. Obligingly come after break which now ends 5 minutes earlier, has lunch at 12:30 and then continue with after lunch lessons until 14:00. (We start at 7:20, but leave for gym at 7:55 and are usually back by 9:30)

We will now do ACE math two days a week, and ACE English the next two days. I made sure that we leave enough time for the activities I believe in like regularly counting money, filling out forms (to improve planning of writing - if the space is small, you lettering must be small, you have to start as far left as possible ), filing papers, looking up telephone numbers, practising of conversations etc.

I found it also gave me a sense of security - when the math time was finished, I said "Time to read now", knowing that we would get round to all the other activities as well. The homework timetable is attached to the morning schedule: E.g. on Mondays she has to write her diary, do reading comprehension, ACE math and do some theme work (Social studies).

When I checked at the end of the day - that is exactly the homework I wrote in her homework diary as we worked through the timetable.

Long live timetables!